by Annie Adams
“And what is that?” K.C. said, her tone laced with disbelief.
“That Vanessa Brown, sore winner she may be, wasn’t trying to influence me as a judge.”
“What about the arrangement on your parents’ porch? You still don’t think she delivered it?”
“No.”
“Well then, who did?” K.C. said loud enough for other restaurant patrons to look over at us.
“I don’t know. Maybe it was Elma.”
“The woman does have brass you-know-whats,” K.C. said. She scowled. “That’s a helluva display of one-upmanship. I wouldn’t peg her as an anonymous sender though.”
“Maybe she forgot to sign her name,” I said.
“Maybe.”
“I do know one thing,” I said.
“What’s that, Boss?”
“I’m not going to risk a lifetime ban by asking her.”
“You got that right, sister,” K.C. said.
CHAPTER SIX
Another part of the Jubilee each year was the clothing donation drive. Contestants and attendees could bring clothing and get a reduced entry fee. The donations would be taken to the nearest homeless shelter. K.C. and I drove to Sherry Auerbach’s place to pick up her donation. My mother hadn’t said why I needed to and I hadn’t asked.
I rang the doorbell and no one came to the door, so I knocked. After several minutes we turned to leave, when the door slowly came open.
“Hi Sherry, my mom said you have some clothes for me to pick up for the donation drive.”
“Hello girls. Come on in. I’ve got them in a box in my dining room. Thank you so much for coming, I just feel terrible I won’t be able to participate.”
“Oh my, how come?” K.C. asked.
“I started to feel under the weather yesterday, and thought it would pass. But this morning it’s gotten worse. Like I’ve got some kind of flu.”
I saw K.C. lean away from Sherry ever so slightly. “That’s a shame. You don’t think you’ll pull through in time for tomorrow?”
Sherry shook her head. “No.” She grimaced and clutched her stomach. “It just seems to be getting worse by the minute. Please excuse me.” She turned and nearly sprinted down the hall into what I assumed might be the bathroom.
“Poor thing,” K.C. whispered.
We waited for what seemed like a long time without hearing anything. Finally, I went over to the door Sherry had closed. “Sherry, are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m okay,” a weak, tired voice said. “I’m so sorry, I think I’m going to be in here for a while.”
Poor lady. “Tell you what,” I said to the bathroom door, “we’ll just get the clothes out of the dining room and take them with us. Call if you need anything else, okay?”
“Thank you, Quincy. And thank your mother for me too.”
Politeness above all else. We went to the dining room, having to pass through the kitchen first. There were Mason jars of preserved pie cherries, bags of shelled walnuts, powdered sugar and chocolate chips on the counter.
“Looks like she was going to enter the desserts category,” K.C. said. “Darn, I would have liked to taste whatever she was making over there.”
“You might be right,” I said. “Look.” I pointed to the opened decorative tin sitting on the dining room table.
We grabbed the box of clothing in the corner and said goodbye to Sherry, who had just come out of the bathroom. She said she was terribly embarrassed, but we assured her we were happy to help out and that we were available if she needed anything else.
As we drove away K.C. said, “I never delivered any flowers to Sherry, or that tin of brownies. I wonder why they left her out.”
“That was the same tin as all the others. It had been opened, I saw the brownies inside.”
“Maybe they realized they left her off the list and delivered it themselves.”
“Maybe.” I said. “But we’ve got other things to worry about. I haven’t finished two of the bride’s bouquets being picked up tomorrow morning. Speaking of tomorrow, we’ve got the three wedding deliveries and two pick-ups. Are you going to have enough time to get your entry done?”
“Oh yes, don’t worry about me. I’ll finish most of it this evening. The Jell-O has to set up overnight. Don’t ever believe what the package directions tell you.”
I laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind. Just let me know if you need to leave early today to get started on your entry.”
“I believe I will.”
Once back at the shop, Daphne handed me a fist full of phone messages. “You might want to call your mom first,” she said wearily. For Daphne to have been worn down enough to be annoyed, there must have been several calls.
“I’m so sorry, Daphne. I don’t know why she didn’t call my cell phone.”
“Oh, she did. It’s sitting on your desk.”
“Oops,” I cringed. “Sorry.” It’d probably been a subconscious premonition that led me to forget my phone. I always tried to carry it with me, in case Alex called. Whenever he was at work, I worried. It was comforting to at least have the phone with me, so that if there ever was bad news, I would hear it first.
One of the phone messages was from our favorite bride. I decided to call her first, since her request would likely have the most serious effects on our time schedule. Turns out she’d called to ask about our refund policy. She and her long-time fiancé—two weeks if I remember correctly—had had a falling out the night before and she just didn’t know if she could go through with it—but she wasn’t sure. I told her I sympathized with her situation and felt for her. Really, I did. I also reminded her that she’d signed a contract with me and that she had verbally indicated to me she understood, all the money was non-refundable.
“Oh,” she said through her sobs. “Well, in that case, I need to order an extra corsage for his mom.” Sobs gone, sweet, happy voice had returned.
I told her we could do that and reminded her that it too would be non-refundable.
I hung up the phone while shaking my head. “What was that all about?” K.C. said.
My cell phone rang. I looked at the display and saw my parents’ home phone number. “I’ll tell you after I answer this. Daphne, can you make another corsage for Elizabeth Downing’s wedding?”
Daphne rolled her eyes. “Another one? Sure, I’ll start it now.”
I sat down, bracing myself in case this turned out to be a marathon call, based on how many urgent messages my mother had left with Daphne.
“Hi Mom,” I kept my voice cheerful to try and lead the conversation in that direction.
“Quincy, where have you been?”
“On deliveries. Is everything okay?”
“No, everything is not, okay. Your sister has a doctor’s appointment and your father is sick. I don’t have anyone to run to the store.”
“What do you need? I can run and grab it for you.”
“I don’t need anything now, I just worry in case something goes wrong.”
I couldn’t help letting out a sigh. “So you don’t need anything, you’re just worried that you might?”
“Alright, I know I sounds silly. I just really want to win this year. I’ve come in second and third so many times. And it doesn’t help that Vanessa Brown, who somehow wins every single year has to rub my nose in the fact that I don’t.”
“What did Vanessa do? Did she admit to sending those flowers?”
“No, she left a tin full of brownies on my front porch. There was a little card on it that said, ‘Good Luck, from Vanessa.’”
I mentally thunked my forehead. A light bulb had switched on. “Did you say dad was sick?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“He’s terribly sick to his stomach. He’s had to run to the bathroom all day.”
“Did he eat any of those brownies that Vanessa left on the porch?”
“Hold on.” A thump came through the phone as she set it down. “Angus,” I heard her call. After a long pause she got back on the line,
her breathing heavy. “Sorry, I had to go upstairs to find him. He says yes, he ate some for lunch, since I was busy in the kitchen. Silly man, he could have asked me to fix him something. Oh my goodness,” she exclaimed.
“What?”
“He’s eaten half the tin. Ooh, when he gets over this flu, he’s gonna be in so much trouble. He can’t binge on sweets like that. We’re going to have a talk.”
Before I hung up with her, I offered to run any errands she might need. I was careful not to sound upset about the brownies. I made up an excuse for having asked about them. And I told my mom she was sure to win this year. She didn’t need to worry about how Vanessa Brown was poisoning people to drop them from the competition.
But I was going to do something about it.
I made sure Daphne was okay with me leaving. She said she was almost finished with the extra corsage, and that she could finish the remaining bridal bouquets before closing time. I tried to remain calm and not reveal my plans, but K.C. knew something was up. She was always on the alert for action. We took Jerome with us and jumped into Zombie Sue.
“You think she was handing out bad brownies?” K.C. said.
“Possibly.”
“I know this is going to sound strange coming from me,” she said, “but don’t you think we should call the police?”
“I’m not absolutely sure that she put something in the brownies. It could be that everyone has the flu.”
“Then why are we driving over to Vanessa Brown’s place to rough her up?
“K.C.! We are not going to rough anyone up. We’re merely—going to—fling some nasty allegations.”
“That’s my girl,” K.C. said.
In the back of my mind, something suggested this might be a bad idea. But, whether intentional or not, this woman had caused harm to my family. And call it intuition or stupidity, but I was going to sort things out.
We pulled up and parked on the street in front of the house.
“We’ll just go to the door and knock. When she answers, we’ll ask her if anyone has complained about her brownies,” I said. “Make sure to watch her face and her body language. We should be able to tell if she’s lying.”
“Okay, let’s do this,” K.C. said.
Jerome, who was latched by his harness to a handle in back of the van, jumped up and barked. Then he started pawing at my back seat.
“You stay here,” I told him. “He doesn’t usually bark like that,” I said.
“Maybe he has to tinkle,” K.C. said.
“Not now, Jerome. Really?”
“You go up to the door, I’ll stand by while he goes outside and then let him back in the van. You call me over if there’s a problem,” K.C. said.
We got out, I un-latched Jerome’s harness and opened the side door. He leapt past me and ran directly to Vanessa’s front door.
“Jerome!” I shouted. It did nothing to stop the dog, it just helped to vent my frustration with him.
I ran up to the porch where I found him whining and scratching the door. Then he barked that sharp warning bark he’d used at my parents’ house.
“Jerome, no. Stop it.”
K.C. ran up to us and leaned over to catch her breath. “What’s he doing?”
“He’s scratching up her front door.”
“I’ll take him back to the car. C’mon tough guy.” She latched his leash onto the harness and walked the other direction. He wouldn’t budge. “Now, Jerome. Don’t be naughty, come on.”
He whined and sat on my foot.
I gave up dealing with the dog and rang the doorbell. No one came. Jerome barked again, an eardrum-piercing, impossible to ignore, bark.
“Quiet!” I said. I knocked on the door and we waited.
“It looks like her car is here,” K.C. said.
“I can see the blue light cast from her TV in the front window. I think she’s home.”
Jerome commenced whining and scratching the door again.
“Boss, I think he’s trying to tell us something.”
I looked down at my puppy. “What is it Jerome? What are you trying to tell us?”
He got up and walked toward the side of the house and stopped in front of the side door.
“I think something is wrong and he senses it.” K.C. said. She pounded on the metal screen door and called out, “Vanessa? Are you in there?”
Jerome stood on hind legs and scratched at the screen door.
“I think we should look inside,” I said. “If she’s in there and gets mad, we’ll make something up about a burglar in the area or something.”
I opened the screen door, luckily it wasn’t locked. I knocked one final time on the inner door and called out to Vanessa. There was no response. I tried the knob and it turned. I peered in slowly. Jerome slid past my legs and ran into the house.
“We are in so much trouble if she’s not home. Or if she is.” I said.
I followed the direction in which Jerome had gone. I heard him bark and found him standing over Vanessa Brown flat on her back in a small powder room. I squeezed through the doorway and wedged myself between her and the toilet so I could kneel down.
“She’s unconscious,” I said. “Call 911. Tell them she’s breathing.” There was a pungent, sewer kind of smell in the air. It was enough to burn my eyes and my throat. I reached up and flipped the switch for the bathroom fan, but nothing came on. The smell was starting to get to me. My eyes watered and I gagged. I pulled my shirt collar up over my nose.
K.C. came over with her cell phone to her ear. “Oh, lordy there’s a nasty smell in here,” she said into the phone. “Quincy, she says to ventilate the room if possible.”
“The fan doesn’t work,” I said. “I think we need to move her. But I’m afraid to.”
Just then, I heard sirens. One of the perks of living in a small town, it doesn’t take long for the authorities to reach you.
K.C. led the fireman and EMTs to us. I gladly stepped out of the way. We watched them take Vanessa in the ambulance. We gave our statement to the police, and went back to the shop so that K.C. could take her car and go home, and I could help finish up any wedding work.
We stood in the parking lot behind our building while Jerome sniffed around. “Make sure you watch where it lands if he goes you-know-what.”
I assured her that I had been and would continue to monitor the situation, but I thought enough time had passed that my engagement ring probably wasn’t inside of Jerome.
“Okay, then. I’m off to create my masterpiece. Wish me luck.”
“Good luck!”
She looked up at the sky, as if pondering something deep. “Do you think it makes me a bad person to be glad Vanessa won’t be able to compete now?”
I curtailed a grin. “I know you don’t wish her any harm, so I think it’s okay to be glad that you have a better chance of winning.” I sniffled at the cold air. It was going to dip way below freezing tonight and the thermostat was already on the way down. “I hope I’m not a bad person for thinking she poisoned my dad and Sherry Auerbach.”
“We still don’t know that she didn’t.”
“True,” I said. “Do you think I’d be a bad person if I went to her hospital bed and accused her of trying to poison my friends and family?”
“It wouldn’t make you a bad person, but I’d advise against it. Toodle-loo.”
I’ll admit it. It felt good to have helped Vanessa. Actually it was Jerome who’d been the good guy. To reward him and myself, we stopped at the Bulgy Burger drive through for dinner. I got the Bulgy Burger combo and Jerome got a hamburger patty cooked without any seasoning.
I’d left a message on Alex’s cell phone after I talked to the police. He had friends in our local police department from when he worked undercover there. I didn’t want to him to hear my name, and the words police report, linked together in the same sentence from anyone but me, due to previous experiences.
When Jerome and I got home, I kicked off my boots. We ate our dinner and rel
axed. My house phone rang. The caller ID read Hillside Hospital. I had a moment of panic wondering if Alex or my parents or my sister were there. I was relieved to hear Vanessa Brown on the other line.
“Quincy, I just had to call and thank you for all that you did today. You and your delivery driver might have saved my life.”
“I’m so glad we were there. Are you doing alright?”
“I’m just fine. They’ve got me here overnight for observation, so I’ll most likely go home tomorrow. I asked if it would be in time for the Jubilee, but they’re doubtful.”
Jerome came over to the couch and put his head on my knee.
“Do you know what happened?” I asked.
“I don’t remember much, but apparently there was a high concentration of sewer gas in that powder room. Since it’s just off the kitchen, I always keep the door closed. I smelled a strange smell coming out of there so I took my cleaner in and started scrubbing the toilet. Next thing I knew, I was being wheeled into an ambulance.”
“That must have been so scary.”
“It really was. That’s why I had to call and thank you again for coming in and finding me. For some reason, the gas got into my house. It had a high concentration of some kind of chemical that reacted with the ammonia in my cleaner. It was toxic gas that made me pass out. I could have had brain damaged if I’d stayed in there longer.”
“I’m just happy it all worked out.”
“You know…” There was a long pause.
“Are you okay Vanessa?”
“Yes, I’m fine. I just wasn’t sure how to ask you this because I don’t want to sound ungrateful. How come you were there, at my house?”
I felt the heat rush to my face. “I—was trying to figure out a mix up with—the brownies you had us deliver.”
“Oh? What mix up?”
“Um—the brownies that my parents received weren’t delivered by my shop. So I was worried we missed a delivery or messed up your order. I came to your house to ask you about it.”
“We didn’t order a delivery for your parents. I’m sorry we didn’t but I just sent flowers to the competitors in my category.”